Christophe Ancey

Christophe Ancey is an Associate Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he serves in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), specifically in the Institute of Civil Engineering (IIC) and the Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory (LHE). He also holds teaching appointments in SGC-Teaching and EDME-Teaching departments at EPFL. His office is located at GC A1 401, Station 18, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.

Dr. Ancey holds both a PhD and engineering degree from Ecole Centrale de Paris and Grenoble National Polytechnic Institute. After completing his doctoral work (1994-1997) on rheology of granular flows under Pierre Evesque, he worked as a researcher at Cemagref before joining EPFL in 2004. He directs the Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory and serves as associate editor for Water Resources Research, a leading journal in hydrology.

Dr. Ancey's research spans fluid dynamics, rheology, and hydraulics with emphasis on geophysical flows and natural hazards. His work focuses on three interconnected themes: rheology of concentrated suspensions (particularly granular flows in avalanches and mudflows), inverse problems in rheology (determining microscopic behavior from macroscopic measurements), and particle entrainment in turbulent suspensions (erosion and sediment transport processes).

His recent publications (2022-2025) demonstrate continued innovation in sediment transport modeling, experimental techniques like PIV for complex flows, and integration of machine learning approaches. The research shows progression from fundamental fluid mechanics to practical applications in natural hazard assessment and river engineering, with particular attention to granular segregation, avalanche-obstacle interactions, and river morphodynamics.

• Associate Editor, Water Resources Research
• Co-founder of Toraval, an engineering consulting firm specializing in avalanche risk management

Dr. Ancey teaches courses on Fluid Mechanics, Flood and Dam Break Waves, Hydrological Risks and Structures, and Similarity and Transport Phenomena in Fluids. He has supervised numerous PhD students whose work spans environmental hydraulics, granular flows, and sediment transport, with current students including Chen Yanan, Farazande Sofi, and Giboulot Axel Loïc among others.